Happy new years everyone! Check out the zombie gals in our new 2014 Zombie Pinup Calendar. The calendar will be out very soon and we will have a limited run so get them before they are gone!
We will announce the release very soon but in the mean time, sink your teeth in to these pics

He’s too much for us to control here so we are unleashing him on you. The few remaining 10″ (25.4cm) Limited Edition Samurai Zombies want to get out and cause all sorts of havoc on the world.

Scare your family and friends with this “spooktacular” gift for the holidays for only $49.95… Yep you heard us right, only $49.95. That’s $100 off the regular price of $149.95. Quantities are limited and we are selling out quickly so hurry up and get them before they are gone!

Check out the latest review from Mr Bob’s Builds. We have customers all over the world but recently, there has been a higher demand from the UK as well as many custom paint jobs. Mr. Bob breaks it down for us.

(The UI was developed by Megan and I through a never ending series of iteration. Something to be expected if we want to get it to function and feel right.)

The first playable demo is rapidly approaching. In a little over a month Creative Proximity and Box O Zombies look to reveal a peek at what is to be expected of the Box O Zombie game. The demo will also provide an opportunity for the art team to review how things are or are not working together visually. The biggest issue thus far is making sure that assets stand out against the ground texture.

Although measures were put in place to avoid visibility issues it turns out more needs to be done. A lot of this is due to the wide range of the camera. The player can zoom out quite a bit. This leads to a loss the simple block detail used in pixel art. There will be some touch ups as well as VFX tricks that will need to be implemented. It is very difficult to let some things go but it is important to create reminders that there will be time for it later and prioritize. I keep notes of issues and potential solutions. An I.O.U to any testers and the art team itself. We will pay back what we owe to the game before it fully ships.

The UI

As an artist I primarily focus on character, props and more recently environments. I greatly appreciate sleek UI design, but working on it can be a tedious process. For starters it is tricky business. The UI needs to sync with the game and when the visuals of the game slowly evolve with the update process it leads to a lot of iteration. The design at this stage has gone through various adjustments and changes. The UI is directly linked to function dictated by design, so that piles on more iterations and adjustments.

In addition, I also have moved to working on animation, icons and miscellaneous environment and clean up tasks. It is a rough road with small development and sometimes to many gear shifts can take it’s toll on the creative process. Early on I could focus primarily on the characters and overall art direction. Now that we are in a semi-crunch, it is more direction and even more production. Early on I felt like Dr. Octopus with the great art team working as extra arms. Now Dr. Octopus doesn’t have quite enough arms to keep Peter Parker from another mid-fight, sassy quote. SHUT UP ALREADY SPIDERMAN!

The Animation

(The animation team now consist of Eddie Einikis, Sarah Harkey the mid production addition and myself. Unfortunately Vicky Kao took a break to pursue opportunities in comics, her work has been greatly appreciated. The Sprites in this post are a mixture of all our work.)

This is one area that was daunting early on. Animation, especially in isometric, ESPECIALLY with pixel art, is another area of tedium for some. Luckily, the team has picked up to pixel painting quite well. When sitting down to plan production I was concerned with the level of animations requested with the time and small team we had. There was a good amount of dissection and clever production shortcuts that helped make the schedule more reasonable. Solid production techniques, and prioritizing has also been very important. It also helps that although small, the team I work with is very talented. It also helped that despite my experience in certain areas, I overlooked a simple technique shown to be by Larry Pixel of the awesome Moon Intern team (http://www.moonintern.com/)

(As the case with many tasks, with time production runs smoother and more quickly. The key is not just improvement through repetition but properly utilizing new techniques, hot key’s and time management. I am very happy with the consistency in look from artist to artist through it all.)

So fast forward a bit to present time and we are in a really good place as far as delivering animations for the demo. There will be a significant amount of fixes and improvements I would like to see that will really push the sense style. For this deadline, we have some solid work keeping the spot in the code warm. Sarah, Eddie and I have been churning out sprite sheets, bringing each character to life.

The next Dev Diary will be the last! It will be a brief overview of the production and feature a look back at the game’s Style Guide. It will be interesting to see the comparison. It also could be very uninteresting. We shall see.

We hope you had a fun and safe July 4th weekend. As August approaches, we wanted
to give all of you an update on what’s going on with the Box O Zombies game.

We promised you beta access sometime in July but we’re going to have to bend that
promise. You’ll still get to test out what we’ve been working on this summer, but it looks
like it’s probably going to be a little closer to the end of August.

We know this might be disappointing to all of you but I assure you it is a necessary
delay. We want to provide all of you with the best test environment we can, and to do
that we need a little more time.

We Want You…To Play Box O Zombies

Make sure you keep www.boxozombies.com bookmarked as we’ll be posting more
developer diaries as well as some test footage in the coming days. We’re super excited
about what we’ve been working on and we’re anxious to get you all into the game.

As Zombie Sam would say, “Braaiiins!!” but what he’d mean was it will be worth the
wait.

(This year’s C2E2 booth was really amazing, kudos to Kent, Amanda, Shawn, Tim and everyone who made it what it was.)

(The booth was also generous this year giving out some toys, an iPad mini and an original sketch seen above. The sketch was done during the course of the final day.)

The dust has cleared, the banners are rolled up and the cardboard Iron Man suites are tucked away in the closet. Money has evacuated pockets. Rooms are decorated with superheroes and villains. C2E2 is in the rear view mirror, but there is still much work to be done for Box O Zombies.

A polished, fully playable demo of the game is in sights. This is impressive considering the team is a mix of professionals and students with most of us working on it part time. This makes production and deadline setting extremely tricky. As noted in earlier entries, flexibility and keeping a finger on the pulse is key. So far so good as the game is now taking shape before our eyes.

The game is ever changing and will continue to evolve. We have a UI in place, but it is almost sure to go through a transformation. Buildings are adjusted and characters are stepping off of the concept sheet into the pixel world. Below are some of the art updates since the latest entries. This includes the complete survivor roster and a couple last second Zombie editions.

(More characters are joining the team, all serving a specific purpose in keeping the community alive. The pixel art was created by Vicky Kao.)

This is the complete rosters of the game’s survivors, all of which will be key factors to your…survival. Behind all those furrowed brows (would you not furrow a brow during an apocalypse?), there are unique abilities that will prove valuable whether you need to destroy, manage, defend or construct. The cast of characters not only serve different elements of combat and narrative, they each come with a specialty, calling for you to properly implement them when planning the best way to not end up between awful smelling zombie teeth. For example, Nathaniel Tinkerton (farthest to the left) is an engineer. Upgrading and protecting him will be important in advancing your camps infrastructure and recovering lost technologies. Where as Mindy Gupta is the team’s doctor, maintaining health, emergency care and day to day medicine will depend on her progression.

(A couple new zombies join the group. This time I took a crack at the pixel versions so the team can focus on animation.)

The exploding zombie was a smooth process, which was good because I needed to turn these concepts around quickly. The idea was to create a bloated zombie that would explode onto people. Something that isn’t a new concept to the genre. As always, I wanted to figure out a way to bring something new to these old concepts and create a universe that feels a little different. So as I developed the silhouettes with a standard approach of a big, bulbous form, I started to play around with how human the zombie looked.

I pushed it to the point where it look less like a zombie and more of a alien/monster. It went too far, but helped establish some interesting ideas. What came about was developing it on the border of zombie and monster. I started to give it an amphibious feel. I wanted to convey this idea of pressure building internally and over all sliminess. So what better inspiration than a frog like form that inflates and is often moist. The zombie started to transform from standard exploding zombie, to monster and now into a frog like zombie, with touches of the creature of the black lagoon in it’s face

(Time was tight, but I am getting a little better at knocking out iterations in a short amount of time.)

Originally, I imagined the wrestler was attacked in his gym across from a construction yard. Upon turning, he chased out his apprentice into the construction yard where they battled and he picked up his extreme damage. Completely believable.
Although the story is absolutely plausible…The Luchador makes him a little too much of an individual for a character that needs to be duplicated through out the game. So upon the return to the drawing board a new story arose that complimented the design and function better.

I now started to develop him as a garbage man. I imagined him en route when he was bombarded by a hoard. Unable to fight them off, he was infected. In an attempt to avoid the life of a zombie he hurled himself into his truck as it was compacting. Unfortunately he turned while before being fully crushed and with his now mysterious zombies strength, crawled out to unleash smelly doom. The gives better support to the body damage as well as explains why you might see more than one of these guys hanging around.
So initial disappointment lead to more iteration and the strengthening of a character. This version suits the hopefully iconic elements better than before without pinning them down to an individual. The Luchador is definitely a character that will be revisited, and because of this process of cutting and rebuilding, that design will find itself stronger when its day comes.

In review both concepts could use some better rendering of the forms and surface textures. It would have also been nice to have a little more time to push the design further and refine elements to make the execution of the design a little more solid. I am getting better with poses but still have work to do in regards to making them feel a little more lose and fluid.

Box O Zombies exhibited at C2E2 last weekend to give a peek under the hood of our upcoming game for iOS and to showcase the brand new Touchstone from Creative Proximity working with the enhanced line of Box O Zombies toys.

Con attendees who stopped by the booth for a song and dance from our developers (featuring Shawn’s corny jokes), were introduced to the NFC collectible figures crafted for the Box O Zombies game and got to see first hand how the figures are used to create enhanced gameplay and add additional strategic elements to the game.

We were thrilled with the positive feedback on our game as well as the “game” changing NFC Touchstone. We can’t thank you enough for your support. Be sure to keep an eye out right here at BoxOZombies.com for information on how you can get into the beta and help support the project if you were unable to attend the C2E2 festivities. If you are interested in learning more about the Touchstone, NFC Toys, or how other game and app developers can integrate the Touchstone into their next project, visit the Creative Proximity site.

Our convention exclusive figure, Zomicbook Guy, was very popular, along with other available products for sale like the Founder’s Set which included the Touchstone and (3) limited edition bronze and green painted figures. We want to thank everyone who made a purchase, as you all are helping to support the remaining development of the game.

A congratulations to our two giveaway winners who were notified earlier this week of their incoming prizes. One lucky supporter who purchased a Touchstone is getting a brand new iPad Mini and a new Pixelite who signed up for Pixeldom on the convention floor will be getting the grand prize package of a Touchstone, the (3) limited edition figures AND an iPad Mini!

“I just wanted to say that our first day at #C2E2 went extremely well. Our new figures and game was well received, Not to mention that some of the game developers we met there were excited about getting their hands on our Touchstone device to implement their own toys/games. Thank you all for your support and we hope to continue to bring zombie love from the bottom of our undead hearts”

We’re having a great time at the booth. We’ve got people signing up for Pixeldom accounts at the Kiosk, we are demoing the game and the Touchstone capabilities, and we’ve got Pixeldom broadcasting live interviews all day! Right from our booth!

Make sure to signup for Pixeldom some time before Sunday at 5pm to be entered to win the Grand Prize Pack!

In a couple of weeks, there will be a new set of Box O Zombies toys demoing at C2E2. I was fortunate enough to design several of the new figures. Among these figures, is a special edition that will debut at C2E2 and will only be available at trade shows. That special edition figure has been named, Zomic Book Guy. In this developer diary I will take you through a relatively brief overview of the process of taking something from my brain, to paper, to the imaginary world of a computer screen to the imaginary world of reality. So if that sounds very uninteresting to you, just scroll to the bottom to see what the final digital sculpt looks like.

(A few images collected for inspiration. These are all sources that capture elements that I would like to learn from. So the idea is not to imitate, but dissect their appeal and understand the principles in a way that will strengthen my work.)

The first step was wide open for this character. Unlike the others, he had no written description. All I knew was that I needed to have a figure ready for C2E2 and that they wanted it to be a play on a convention visitor. I usually let things cook in my head a bit before putting them on paper. Meanwhile, I gather reference and inspiration. This process helps be develop a better idea of who the character is and where I might find the appeal. This is something that is a pretty standard approach and for good reason. It usually works out for the better.

For quite some time I had made the full transition to digital. However in developing this character I was reminded not to phase out the traditional materials completely. I came up with some initial thumbnail sketches while away from my desk. It was the early stages of transferring thoughts to a page. It was a small sketch pad and a relaxed moment when I found something that clicked (A good reminder that it is best to forget the certain pressures and trust your stream of consciousness). I found a shape, posture and personality that struck a chord. In most cases I would keep going through a couple more iterations to see if something better comes along or just dig out some other ideas. Unfortunately time was dwindling and I needed to trust my instinct and run with something.

(I eventually decided to go with cartoon-ish damage to the eye to help cut our the silhouette and make it stand out more.I also played around with different hats and bag designs, trying to find a proper balance of shapes and line work.)

I scanned the pencil and ink sketches and brought them into Photoshop and began to knock out more rough iterations of a particular design. I hacked away flesh, swapped hats and played with accessories until I found a combination that worked best for the character, printing constraints and thegame’s art direction.

Early on there was concern over the character’s size. I chose the size in order to create an interesting silhouette, movement and some character contrast. This contrast not only comes with the body size in comparison to his accessories, but his intimidating size paired with his somewhat nervous expression. Also, the contrast in size and accessories helps create define the humor. I wanted this character to have immediate pay off in the game’s universe, as a reference to the sights of C2E2 and as a statue you wouldn’t mind having displayed amongst your collection. I felt his size and the motion in his pose helped create the appeal we needed with out mocking his wright.

(These are the iterations building up to a near final concept. I tried different color and accessory combinations. In some cases I’m figuring out the logic of the details and in others I am looking for something that just feels right. Usually, there would much more iteration, but deadlines change things.)

After deciding on a general size and accessory combo, I then carried it through the concept stages. This involved figuring out scale in comparison to other characters, color pallets and smaller damage details. The advantage I had with this character was that I would also be the sculptor, so I could leave some room and further define the character in 3D.

From 2D Thing to 3D Thing

(An early look at the sculpt progress, as well as a glimpse of what Zomic Book Guy looks like under the mask.)

I decided to sculpt the head and body separately in order to allow myself a good amount of resolution without my PC chugging. They could later be decimated (a process of reduction in ZBrush) and combined if there were any file size issues. I don’t usually like to work this way but it helped me focus on the bust and really develop the personality in the face.

During the sculpting stage I did quite a bit of adjusting. The pose needed to be tweaked to make sense in a more realistic space. Although I think it works in 2D, it looked a little awkward in 3D. It also made it a little tricky to balance. It changed his personality a bit, which I liked, but with more time I would have fleshed out his pose a little better. I like that he looks apprehensive, but it looks a little too light footed, as if he is sneaking around. He looks to be in mid-transfer of his weight and it probably would be a more effective pose if I planted his weight on the leading foot.

The uncertain, socially awkward reminiscence of his personality was pushed through out the sculpting process. I gave his facial expression a little bit more life to animate the statue. I wanted to inject a little more character into this statue compared to my last one that was a bit lifeless (which I guess is fitting in a way). Yes he is a zombie, but I would like people to feel a connection when looking at him, a feeling that he was once a person and not just a monster. I tried to do all this while keeping the details defined by simple shapes and cuts to ensure that it will transfer to the 3.5 inch print. The limitations in this case helped assist the style in a satisfying way.

(The final concept alongside the final sculpt. There a good amount of changes when looking closely, but I think the general feel of the character was captured. I do feel like I could have done a better job of figuring out how to make the wings play more of a part in the 3D silhouette.)

So in terms of the sculpt, there you have it. I spend a good amount of time playing around with subtle color changes when poly painting. I usually paint skin temperatures, but in this case I wanted more of a flatter, cartoon feel and cut that step out. So I blocked in the colors, then painting in highlights and shadows, finishing with smaller details like the blood and the swag bag design. The base was a bit rushed due to the impending deadlines. I would have liked time to do something a little more interesting, detailed and story oriented. However, the production must go on and it was on to the next phase.

(A peak at the digital version of the Zomic Book Guy. The blood had to be changed from red to green which was a concern at first, but I found my self pleased with the way it turned out.)

(Close ups of the final sculpt, I try to push the detail with out crushing printing costs. I learned my lesson with the Samurai Zombie from last year.)

Not Done Yet! Printing and Adjustments

(This nonsense is a sheet calling out the color codes for the printers. This is always tricky, for there is no way to say for sure how accurate the colors will translate. In some cases I trust the printers, while in other spots I call out a few colors within a gradient.)

Although it feels finished, it never is. After turning in the sculpt for printing it bounced back several times. Adjustments needed to be made to accommodate the strength of the toy.I made the bag strap thicker as well readjusted pieces to overlap more in order to make it a but more structurally sound. There were also renders that needed to be mocked up to ensure scaling was properly translated. The renders seen above were prepped to assist in the coloring of the figure. The colors in this case, were not pulled directly from the poly-paint, so a Pan-tone code was provided for the main colors.

So there you have it, this is the process and amount of work that went into the figure. The process took a little over a month, with various eyes constantly reviewing the progress. It may have been shorter, but my attention was split between this and the art direction, which was a challenge in itself. Anytime you have a work split like that, you always feel with more time you could have done things differently. That is just the nature of production art. At the moment, it is coming down to the wire and I will be seeing the final toys the day before the show. I did get a chance to see some prototype prints and they looked great. So here is hoping you guys will enjoy it as well.

We will be showing 3 of them on the C2E2 floor. This one in particular is a special edition, meaning it will only be available at C2E2. We will also have the 10″ Samurai figure available, alongside personal prints and BoZ prints for sale. So check us out at Booth #1018 and I also will have a table somewhere in artist alley, so find me in the sea of prints. Thanks for reading my ramblings.